Little is known about the relationship between family firms and their employees. This paper aims to close this gap. We distinguish between family management and family ownership as two dimensions of family firms and analyze their respective influence on downsizing. Our findings show that family...

We report on the current state and important older findings of empirical studies on corporate credit ratings and their relationship to ratings of other entities. Specifically, we consider the results of three lines of research: The correlation of credit ratings and corporate default, the...

This paper documents the conglomerate discount for all available German firms and the DAX 30 firms in detail. It shows a moderate discount of about 0.06 based on German comparable firms and of about 0.20 for a combined sample of German and European peer groups. I further examine the relationship...

A good description of the dynamics of interest rates is crucial to price derivatives and to hedge corresponding risk. Interest rate modelling in an unstable macroeconomic context motivates one factor models with time varying parameters. In this paper, the local parameter approach is introduced...

A stronger long-term orientation is considered a competitive advantage of family firms relative to non-family firms. In this study, we use panel data of U.S. firms and analyze this proposition. Our findings are surprising. Only in when the family is involved in the management of the firm is the...

This paper investigates to what extent the fundamentals of the real economy are re ected in the stock prices of Japan. A Markov switching VAR model with switching variances is used to test the structural identi cation scheme. Identification of fundamental and nonfundamental shocks is shown to be...

This paper examines pecuniary aspects of work during unusual hours based on the German Time Use Data for 2001/02. The findings show positive wage premia of 9 – 10 percent for shift workers and men who work during unusual hours. There is some evidence of negative selection which suggests that...

Germany experienced an even deeper fall in GDP in the Great Recession than the United States with little employment loss. Employers’ reticence to hire in the preceding expansion - associated in part with a lack of confidence it would last - contributed to an employment shortfall equivalent to...

There are legal grounds to hear competitors in merger control proceedings, and competitor involvement has gained significance. To what extent this is economically sensible is our question. The competition authority applies some welfare standard while the competitor cares about its own profit. In...

In their joint framework project, the FASB and the IASB recently proposed dropping stewardship as a separate objective of financial accounting, because the Boards view stewardship and valuation usefulness as compatible sub-objectives ranking under an overall objective of decision usefulness....